Text File I/O

Text Files and Binary Files

Files that are designed to be read by human beings, and that can be read or written with an editor are called text files Text files can also be called ASCII files because the data

they contain uses an ASCII encoding scheme An advantage of text files is that the are usually the same

on all computers, so that they can move from one computer to another

Text Files and Binary Files Files that are designed to be read by programs and

that consist of a sequence of binary digits are called binary files Binary files are designed to be read on the same type of

computer and with the same programming language as the computer that created the file

An advantage of binary files is that they are more efficient to process than text files

Unlike most binary files, Java binary files have the advantage of being platform independent also

For this course, we will deal only with text files

Streams

A stream is an object that enables the flow of data between a program and some I/O device or file If the data flows into a program, then the stream is

called an input stream If the data flows out of a program, then the stream

is called an output stream

Streams

Input streams can flow from the keyboard or from a file System.in is an input stream that connects to the

keyboard Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in); Output streams can flow to a screen or to a file

System.out is an output stream that connects to the screen

System.out.println("Output stream");

System.in, System.out, and System.err

The standard streams System.in, System.out, and System.err are automatically available to every Java program System.out is used for normal screen output System.err is used to output error messages to the

screen The System class provides three methods (setIn, setOut, and setErr) for redirecting these standard streams:

public static void setIn(InputStream inStream)public static void setOut(PrintStream outStream)public static void setErr(PrintStream outStream)

File Names

The rules for how file names should be formed depend on a given operating system, not Java When a file name is given to a java constructor for

a stream, it is just a string, not a Java identifier (e.g., "fileName.txt")

Any suffix used, such as .txt has no special meaning to a Java program

Path Names

When a file name is used as an argument to a constructor for opening a file, it is assumed that the file is in the same directory or folder as the one in which the program is run

If it is not in the same directory, the full or relative path name must be given

Path Names

A path name not only gives the name of the file, but also the directory or folder in which the file exists

A full path name gives a complete path name, starting from the root directory

A relative path name gives the path to the file, starting with the directory in which the program is located

Path Names

The way path names are specified depends on the operating system A typical Windows path name that could be

used as a file name argument is“C:\\user\\data\\data.txt”

A Java program will accept a path name written in either Windows or Unix format regardless of the operating system on which it is run

A File Has Two Names

Every input file and every output file used by a program has two names:

1. The real file name used by the operating system2. The name of the stream that is connected to the file

The actual file name is used to connect to the streamThe stream name serves as a temporary name for the

file, and is the name that is primarily used within the program

Writing to a Text File

The class PrintWriter is a stream class that can be used to write to a text file An object of the class PrintWriter has the

methods print and println These are similar to the System.out methods of

the same names, but are used for text file output, not screen output

Writing to a Text File

All the file I/O classes that follow are in the package java.io, so a program that uses PrintWriter will start with a set of import statements:import java.io.PrintWriter;import java.io.FileOutputStream;import java.io.FileNotFoundException;

The class PrintWriter has no constructor that takes a file name as its argument It uses another class, FileOutputStream, to

convert a file name to an object that can be used as the argument to its (the PrintWriter) constructor

Writing to a Text File

A stream of the class PrintWriter is created and connected to a text file for writing as follows:

PrintWriter outputStreamName;outputStreamName =

new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream(FileName));

The class FileOutputStream takes a string representing the file name as its argument

The class PrintWriter takes the anonymous FileOutputStream object as its argument

Writing to a Text File This produces an object of the class PrintWriter

that is connected to the file FileName The process of connecting a stream to a file is called

opening the file If the file already exists, then doing this causes the old

contents to be lost If the file does not exist, then a new, empty file named FileName is created

After doing this, the methods print, printf, and println can be used to write to the file

Writing to a Text File

When a text file is opened in this way, a FileNotFoundException can be thrown In this context it actually means that the file could not be

created This type of exception can also be thrown when a program

attempts to open a file for reading and there is no such file It is therefore necessary to enclose this code in exception

handling blocks The file should be opened inside a try block A catch block should catch and handle the possible

exception The variable that refers to the PrintWriter object should

be declared outside the block (and initialized to null) so that it is not local to the block

Sample Codepublic class TextFileOutputDemo{ public static void main(String[] args) { PrintWriter outStream = null; try { outStream =

new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream("stuff.txt")); }

catch(FileNotFoundException e) { System.err.println("Error opening the file stuff.txt."); System.exit(0); } outStream.println("The quick brown fox"); outStream.println("jumped over the lazy dog.");

outStream.close( ); }}

Writing to a Text File

When a program is finished writing to a file, it should always close the stream connected to that fileoutputStreamName.close(); This allows the system to release any resources used to

connect the stream to the file If the program does not close the file before the program

ends, Java will close it automatically, but it is safest to close it explicitly

IOException When performing file I/O there are many situations in which an

exception, such as FileNotFoundException, may be thrown Many of these exception classes are subclasses of the class

IOException The class IOException is the root class for a variety of

exception classes having to do with input and/or output These exception classes are all checked exceptions

Therefore, they must be caught or declared in a throws clause

Catching IOExceptionpublic class TextFileOutputDemo{ public static void main(String[] args) {

PrintWriter outStream = null;

// OPEN the file here as in previous code try {

outStream = new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream("stuff.txt"));

outStream.println("The quick brown fox"); outStream.println("jumped over the lazy dog.");

}catch (IOException e) {

System.err.println (e.getMessage());}

finally { // always close the file outputStream.close( );}

}}

Appending to a Text File

To create a PrintWriter object and connect it to a text file for appending, a second argument, set to true, must be used in the constructor for the FileOutputStream objectoutputStreamName =

new PrintWriter(new FileOutputStream(FileName,true));

After this statement, the methods print, println and/or printf can be used to write to the file

The new text will be written after the old text in the file

Reading From a Text File Using Scanner

The class Scanner can be used for reading from a text file as well as the keyboard

Simply replace the argument System.in (to the Scanner constructor) with a suitable stream that is connected to the text fileScanner StreamObject = new Scanner(new FileInputStream(FileName));

Methods of the Scanner class for reading input (nextInt, nextLine) behave the same whether reading from a text file or the keyboard

Input from a Text File Using Scanner (Part 1 of 4)

Input from a Text File Using Scanner (Part 2 of 4)

Input from a Text File Using Scanner (Part 3 of 4)

Input from a Text File Using Scanner (Part 4 of 4)

Testing for the End of a Text File with Scanner

A program that tries to read beyond the end of a file using methods of the Scanner class will cause an exception to be thrown

However, instead of having to rely on an exception to signal the end of a file, the Scanner class provides methods such as hasNextInt and hasNextLine These methods can also be used to check that the

next token to be input is a suitable element of the appropriate type

Checking for the End of a Text File with hasNextLine (Part 1 of 4)

Checking for the End of a Text File with hasNextLine (Part 2 of 4)

Checking for the End of a Text File with hasNextLine (Part 3 of 4)

Checking for the End of a Text File with hasNextLine (Part 4 of 4)

Checking for the End of a Text File with hasNextInt (Part 1 of 2)

Checking for the End of a Text File with hasNextInt (Part 2 of 2)

hasNext

The scanner also provide a more general method named hasNext that returns false if there are no more tokens of any kind in the file.

hasNext can be used when the file contains different kinds of data

The File Class

The File class is like a wrapper class for file names The constructor for the class File takes a name, (known

as the abstract name) as a string argument, and produces an object that represents the file with that name

The File object and methods of the class File can be used to determine information about the file and its properties Exists( ), canRead( ), isFile( ), isDirectory( ), etc